


Traces of Dreams

by estike



Category: Azure Moment
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 19:54:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13982181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estike/pseuds/estike
Summary: It is the last quarter of seventeen ninety-three. Antoinette is dead, dreams are shattered as well as hearts.Jacques, Ademar, and Simon have nothing left to do but to follow the traces of their broken dreams for one last time, before the inevitable.





	Traces of Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> There is a Shirane book with the same title, but there is no connection - the title of this story comes from the English translation of one of the lines Antoinette sings in her solo, which happens to be the same.

A fix, a fix, a fix, a fix. A fix of a fix. Of a fix. 

There is always a fix, isn’t there? 

A man in dark coloured clothes, who once sounded soft but now he is a shell of himself, he is a lie… worse! He is not even a lie. That would not hurt _this_ much. He is simply the manifestation of unkept promises. Of failed plans. Of ideals that were too fragile and too beautiful to keep on living in this world.  
Like there is such a thing as an idea being too beautiful. And there is! And there must be. Why else would all of it turn into ashes in their mouths, closing their throats and choking them up as they struggle against the inevitable. 

Then how comes there is no such thing as an idea too foul to exist? 

A man in dark coloured clothes, who once sounded soft but now he is a shell of himself, he is a lie … Is he talking about Robespierre? Is he talking about himself?  
It doesn’t matter.

Once, what feels an entire lifetime ago now, he proudly grabbed arms for a cause. He proudly announced himself on the battlefield, in a fight for freedom, for liberty, for love. More than that. He was ready to face and oppose those he loved, in exchange for what he believed in.  
Is there pain because deception was involved, too? He took those arms, so no more innocents would die without a reason. He took those arms because when he looked out of the palace windows, he saw multitudes of himself. Dozens of Jacques. In hollow, tired, dark gazes, staring back at him: help.  
But this is not about him. It was never about him. He didn’t only see Jacques, he saw Simon, too, he saw Adémar, Damian.... Their mothers and fathers. He saw the past, and he also saw what the future promised, if they were to carry on this way. 

In the middle of the turmoil that is the constant state of the world (but he did not know this then!), he was offered a fix. And there really was no deception. The pain does not come from there. From being fooled. They never promised him an easy solution.  
It was never easy to leave Simon behind.  
It was not easy to learn that Adémar also wouldn’t follow on this path, and remain with the aristocrats. For reasons unknown to him. Loyalty? It could not have been loyalty! Fear, perhaps, he thinks. A habit difficult to leave behind. 

He pursued this path not because he thought it would be easy and convenient. Not because he was promised fame, or a name that would survive for eternity. He was always contented with the supporting role. There is something safe about avoiding too much exposure. Simon often called that something “stupid” and Jacques himself “tremulous.” 

Yet he never wanted more. He never wanted a castle, limitless wine, or a never-ending life. Thank you very much, Jacques will take a warm hearth, fine bread that will just fill up his belly, and the knowledge that he lived an agreeable life, when his time comes. Forever is filled with so much pain, and so many questions.

Or … he used to want that sort of life. When he thought that such things could ever be possible. 

Now, Simon is not with him anymore, and in his dreams of a happy life, Simon was always there with him, sitting next to the fireplace, the warmth of the flames licking their cheeks rosy. Simon was always there with him, sharing his dinner. He would… he would have to die before Simon, he thought, so his absence would not carve a hole in his chest and the void would not consume him, or whatever he used to be.

And look! There! There it is! There is the hole! Simon is alive, he is still alive, somewhere, he knows that, and the void is there, eating him from the inside. A man in dark coloured clothes, just as dark as the heavy absence that presses down on his chest. 

Why should absence hurt? How does that make sense? Absence is nothing, and nothing should never be able to affect him. Where the wind does not blow, there is nothing to comb into his hair. So why now… why? Longing should be cured once, with time. He thought time would make the absence easier. He thought he would stop thinking about Simon. Not immediately, of course, but after long months, perhaps. A year. How long should it take to erase childhood memories? To erase half of one’s life? 

It’s been years. 

His name sounded so mischievous on his lips. Always.

“Jacques” came out short and swift, like a small kiss on the cheek. It would be over before he realized it. 

“Theodo _re_ ,” he would say when he was Simon. Then flatly, when he was Saint-Germain. Like he was calling a dog over to sit by his feet. “Theodore.”

But you also have great affection for the pets you keep. If you are a good master, to be sure. 

When he laughed it was like the whisper of God, clear and ringing deep in his ears. When he talked, it was with the voice of the Devil, he wrapped anyone around his little finger in a matter of a sentence or two.  
But now, he was laughing.  
“Help me! Help me take this off and take that wretched thing with you when you come!”  
He was fiddling with his intricate jacket, half in character, slowly stripping Saint-Germain off as he was changing into something more comfortable.  
Jacques took the Lapis Lazuli (or, in this case, “that wretched thing”) as he was asked, and approached Simon, already sitting on the edge of his bed. He laid the stone down next to him, carefully so it would not roll off of the red pillow. Then, he stepped behind Simon-Saint-Germain and as the most docile manservant, slipped the jacket off him first, before kneeling down to take off his shoes too.  
As soon as his shoes were off, Simon sat up cross-legged on the bed, then nodded towards him.  
“You too, take that jacket off. You look awkward.” While Jacques kicked his shoes off, then put both of their jackets away so they would stay immaculate, he took the stone in his hands and twisted it around, investigating the orb. He sighed. “I wish I knew how Saint-Germain saw the future with this.”  
“Hm?” Jacques sat down next to him and pressed his nose close to the cold, blue surface. “You don’t?”  
“I don’t know what I see. … I see it helps me grow very, very rich.” He pressed a kiss on the stone. Their saviour, their only treasure. Then, he added. “And I see you.”  
After the stone, he planted another kiss on Jacques’s cheek.  
“Theodo _re_ ,” he said, pretending to be Saint-Germain. Jacques knew he wasn’t: because of the way he enunciated his name. A sigh. “Come, take this stone away let it rest somewhere safe, and rub my back.”  
“Simon!”  
“Don’t toy with destiny, dear Theodore. I saw it happen in the future. The stone showed me. So come, come, rub my back. Don’t tease fate.”  
He laughed, like God and his angels when Jacques gave in, although bickering a little, and put the Lapis Lazuli away safely. It was unfortunate that Simon played the master, it was unfortunate, but only to a degree. He liked to bicker, but he did not actually mind being ordered around. Simon acted bossy, even before he was reborn an aristocrat. And he liked to give in, after a little pretend-fight.  
There was a drum inside his head, beating to the rhythm of his heart, whenever Simon was around. It had been like that for years.  
He thought it could be fixed once, that a day would come when Simon stopped making him feel that way. With his heart throbbing in his throat.  
It started when they were teenagers and here he was now. Nothing changed. He never told Simon about the heartbeats because he would just laugh at him, and ask. “After all these years!?”  
So, he said nothing. Being wise, he thought. Reflecting it, Simon loved being celebrated, so if there was ever laughter when someone expressed their admiration, it was a laughter of pleasure. Not on the expense of the admirer.  
Simon loved the echoes of his talent the most. The audience in awe, clapping away the silence he left on stage. Jacques, with his mouth open, gaping at his genius. If he could go back… he would say something about the heartbeats.  
(Not now… now it is useless. But _then_.)  
He did not voice it, he just allowed himself to bask in the feeling, to suffer alone. To suffer with something that would bring joy to Simon, anyway. It was a foolish way to handle it.  
When Simon decided Saint-Germain had been pampered enough, he finally got rid of the last fragments of his invented personality, then turned towards Jacques. It felt a lot less awkward when it was his friend showing affections to him, and not this strange, whimsical, ageless aristocrat.  
“Come.”  
He lifted the blanket, so Jacques could fit under it, beside him.  
“But… am I not your servant now?”  
“And? You do not think these aristocrats all have a trusty manservant to warm their beds at night? Come. Theodo _re_.”  
He slid up next to him, enveloped by only the blanket first, then Simon’s skinny arms. Jacques always felt awkward next to him. Not being with him. But existing on the same plane, at the same time. Simon was aerial, light and agile. Both in his movements and his personality.  
Sluggish, heavy Jacques was an unfortunate match. Hard to move. Hard to make him adjust to change.  
They tangled their legs together and kissed until they fell asleep, celebrating their fantastic alchemy.  
So.. that is what he wanted. Back when he was young and foolish. To take the money and run far away, towards that warm hearth, delicious dinners, a fulfilling life. With Simon.  
Simon is not there now, so what is the point? What will warm fire change? 

A fix, a fix, a fix. 

Sometimes you need to fix things too many times and they inevitably crumble down and perish. 

The Lapis Lazuli was supposed to be a fix for their miserable situation. The revolution was supposed to be a fix for starvation, poverty, tyranny. 

And again! The Lapis Lazuli was supposed to help the individual. The revolution was supposed to help the masses. 

In the end, both of those only shattered him to the pieces of the man he thought he was. A figure in dark coloured clothes… oh, but you know already. 

Wasted moments bled into weeks, into months, into years, and it feels like black ink spread all over on the scroll of his life, masking everything. It isn’t really gone. But it is completely wasted. When Simon chose a different path, at least he had his ideals still to live for, he thought. Then, those ideals disappeared, too. 

Now… there is nowhere to go back to. The revolution is not what any of them imagined it to be, but the wheel will not stop. It is still better than whatever it used to be. (Or that is what they keep telling themselves, at least.) 

What he has now is exactly what he used to have before all of this started, except now he can only recount what these things are as if he was scrambling to bring back a long-lost dream, already fading at the edges.

He knew even in the first moments that Theodore loved Saint-Germain. It was no mystery. When he got into the role for the first time, curling the grey jacket over his shoulders, he saw Theodore’s feelings as clearly as he would see his own mirror image. Even if someone else was to take on this role, he thought, they would need to give in to truth, and love Saint-Germain-Simon. He was not compromised by his own feelings, for his own friend. At all. 

Saint-Germain was the most elegant man he ever had the fortune to meet. He was the spitting image of Simon, and he couldn’t have been any more different. He always wore his hair loose. And preferred his real hair over the wigs the rest of the aristocracy abused with great passion – perhaps something he brought with himself from a distant era in the past. Perhaps something Simon brought with himself, as a last memento of his old country life.  
But if it came to Saint-Germain, following the fads of the court was not something he needed to resort to. Being superior to the mundane, quick-lived humans was the essence of his. He was still the most dazzling of them all. Four thousand years. And counting.  
It was a lie, but sometimes Jacques almost forgot it himself. He never looked at Theodore as anything other than a role, but Saint-Germain was different. While Jacques played, Simon became.  
At the beginning, he was still talkative. Then, the secrets flooded in, closing Simon off from him completely.  
“You know, sometimes I see memories of things that never happened.”  
He spoke as Jacques pressed lazy kisses on his temple, saying goodbye to Saint-Germain for the night. The role of Theodore was already stripped down the moment they crossed the doorstep, but it seemed like the other needed to take longer. It was only natural to beckon Simon with sweet kisses, inviting him out.  
“Hm?”  
He repeated, clearer, this time.  
“You know, sometimes I see memories of things that never happened.” Then, when he saw the strange flicker in Jacques’s eyes, thinking that he was losing it, he added. “To me. That never happened to me.”  
“Simon…”  
“I am standing in the Palais Royal, and I see the Sun King and he is almost as dazzling, if not even more dazzling than on the portraits of the Versailles. I think to myself, how can someone have hair so dark, like ebony, and still shine like a beacon?” He sat up in bed wondering for a moment. “No. No, _I_ don’t think it! Simon thinks that, but for me it is natural, we’ve met many times. He motions towards me, he finds me entertaining. I attract all who want to live life to the fullest… He talks to me about Chambord.”  
Maybe Simon stopped talking about it because he thought it scared Jacques. Maybe he stopped because he felt like he could not trust him with so much anymore… Saint-Germain’s grip was not as tight on him that time, Jacques thinks now. He let Simon play for a while.  
But was it really Saint-Germain suffocating him? Should he take the blame? Or was it just Simon, and his endless greed that led them astray? Even if Jacques wants to blame a ghost, it sometimes feels like the easy way out.  
“I know the nooks and corners of Chambord, even though we only stumbled upon it a few weeks ago. Do you know the secret chambers in the cellar?”  
“Simon… we found them together. Do you remember? You read all those books in that very cellar and now you are confusing this role with real life.”  
Jacques tried to laugh it off this way, bringing the man closer to himself. He perhaps even tried to silence him when he placed another kiss on his temple: he was always a coward, and he hated horror stories the most. They always made him wake up in the middle of the night, in cold sweat, dreading the darkness around himself. Even if Simon was there to soothe him.  
“There is a huge lizard carved onto the walls of that hallway. Do you know why, Jacques? I do! I remember. Even though it is not mentioned in a single book in Saint-Germain’s library…”  
Was this a cry for help? Was Simon trying to tell him there was something wrong with Chambord, the Lapis Lazuli, with this whole act? Jacques still wonders sometimes, even though he knows well that he will not find answers, no matter how deeply he will investigate his memories.  
Memories are false, they are treacherous. They allow themselves to be rewritten. They transform with time. Jacques spends a lot of time revisiting them, and even so, they always offer a different picture. The truth is buried somewhere under the waves of time.  
“Enough, now, Simon! You know how much this sort of thing creeps me out,” Jacques begged. A cold shiver ran through his whole body, tormenting him. “Chambord itself creeps me out as it is, you don’t need to make it any worse.”  
Simon didn’t answer. So, he put his head on the man’s shoulder and nuzzled up against him as much as he could. The moon was glowing in the upper right corner of the window: one of them forgot to draw the curtains. Into the darkness of the room, he quietly said.  
“Simon. I want to go home.”  
His voice became distant, and sparkled like the stars. “Home? Where is home?”  
“I don’t know… Somewhere Adémar is now. Damian. The rest of us. Anywhere that is not this haunted castle.”  
Simon brushed his hair a few times, and at that moment, he definitely was Simon. He would recognize the touch.  
“Versailles. There is no point in revisiting old memories we hated, Jacques. What you are looking for is the Versailles. You cannot say that palace is full of horrors.”  
“Unless you mean all those bourgeois, of course.” 

And the gap widens. The gap widens between Simon and Saint-Germain, between Jacques and Simon, and between Jacques’s memories and himself. 

There are several things he wants to be. There are several things he thinks he is. The truth is different from all of these. 

It was obvious for him from the beginning that Theodore was in love with Saint-Germain. There was no other way for him, but to fall in love with that man, dazzling and mysterious, and cherish him as precious treasure. But what Jacques did, at the same time, was only falling out of love with that man. At first, he was taken by his allure, his elegance, his aerial movements, but by the time they moved to the Versailles, all he wanted was to get Simon back, and to save him from the count’s vicious, suffocating grip. 

But the harder he tried to make him stay, the farther Simon floated in the azure waves of time. 

“Theodore! Come rub my back.”  
Theodore came, but Jacques was left somewhere in the other side of the room, standing there, towering above the scene, sternly observing everything that was going on. He did not want this Saint-Germain anymore. All he wanted was to take Simon by the hand and lead him away from this palace.  
They stuffed their pockets with so many riches!  
Jacques was not like Simon, Theodore’s blood did not start flowing in his veins, he was simply pretending. Again, Theodore never looked like the mirror of him (he always found that strange), so maybe it was easier to run away from the role. Jacques never thought of himself as a particularly gifted actor. This time perhaps it was the only thing that saved his skin. Perhaps it only prolonged his suffering.  
He touched Saint-Germain, but his skin was cold. He took Saint-Germain’s clothes off, but it was Simon’s lips he wanted to kiss. It was Simon’s skin he wanted to find under the expensive garments. There are so many ways to show affection, but none of them belonged to Saint-Germain, they wasted away. They were reserved to someone else, and even when playing Theodore, pretending became harder, and harder. He was ready to leave acting behind for the rest of his life until this. Theodore, his last, most hated role.  
When the moment would come, he thought, and he needed to take that grey jacket off for the last time, he would burn it. He would burn it, and it would feel good. Because it would mean that both him and Simon survived the vicious grip of Saint-Germain. And that they were free. 

He never got around to burn that jacket – although he took it off. Simon did not survive Saint-Germain’s grip. And they are still not free. 

Jacques looks down on his clothes (a man in dark coloured clothes, who once sounded soft but now he is a shell of himself), then on the tricolour. Will these burn once? Perhaps he is not idealistic enough anymore to believe the time ever comes when he can take these off and return to himself. That they would be free! 

There really is a lizard carved into the hallways of the Chambord, and Jacques wonders if Simon ever truly knew why. Did Saint-Germain whisper these truths in his ear? Is he watching now? Does he laugh? Knowing that someone else will take the fall for him. Knowing that he has taken away precious time, leeched onto theirs. Truncated his actions, so they would not show the truthfulness of his heart, even if all he did, all he ever did was to proof his affections … 

The rope he brought with himself mercilessly bites into his skin as he clutches, and clutches… 

The fix he is looking for does not exist: Saint-Germain is immortal. But Simon and Jacques are not.


End file.
